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GERMAN 75N:Famous Last Words

What would you say if you knew it would be the last thing you would ever say? Who would you want to hear your words? Would you want to inspire somebody? Terrify them? Shout your defiance or your love in their direction?nThis is a course about last words the final utterances left as legacies for the world in the face of revolution, war, betrayal, heartbreak, or that simplest of endings, death. We will look at a wide variety of last words, including last words codified as genres¿quotations, suicide notes, epitaphs, dying declarations, Japanese death poems, confessions, and the like as literary devices (last sentences, envois, punch lines, epilogues), and as forms of social or cultural practice (the making of heroes, idols, and martyrs in religious, political, and popular culture). We will look at fictional last words, real last words, last words spoken by heroes, gods, and ordinary people. And we will end the course, each of us, by writing out our own last words imagining what we each would write, if we had to sum up what mattered most to us, and if we wanted some small selection of signs to stand in, as it has for many of the authors we will read, for our life and the legacy of it.

Last offered: Autumn 2018
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

GERMAN 97:10 Poems That Will Change Your Life

This course is for anyone who has ever been afraid of poetry, anyone who has ever thought that poems are too difficult to understand, a course for anyone who has fallen in love with poetry before, and for anyone who has used a poem to make a difference in someone's life. You will learn how to read, understand, and if you don't already like poetry. We will read poems from different centuries, different kinds of writers, and different media (paper, computer screens, and even DNA); they will be about loss and love and war and loyalty and bacteria. Some of them will be about you. You will develop interpretive skills that come with this range of poetic forms and structures and will learn how to think about what it means for something to be poetic, whether it is a poem, a Leonard Cohen song, a last minute field goal, or a toilet. Can the poems in this class really change your life? (What would that even mean? We'll discuss.) Maybe; maybe not. But they're certainly going to try.

GERMAN 101:Germany in 5 Words

This course explores German history, culture and politics by tracing five (largely untranslatable) words and exploring the debates they have engendered in Germany over the past 200 years. This course is intended as preparation for students wishing to spend a quarter at the Bing Overseas Studies campus in Berlin, but is open to everyone. Taught in English.

GERMAN 131:What is German Literature?

The aim of this course is to provide a general introduction to German literary and cultural history. What counts as history and literature will be tested and provoked as we examine Germany in its entirety and not just in its whiteness. From unification to the present, we will reflect on identity formation in Germany and challenge the idea that Germany was/is constructed as a homogeneous white nation. In this course, we will discuss the perception of the German colonies, the Holocaust, Postwar, and Reunification from the perspective of marginalized Germans. These Germans (e.g. Black Germans, Turkish Germans, Jewish Germans, Asian Germans), have a long history that is too often ignored. Taught in German.nPrerequisite: One year of German language at Stanford or equivalent.

GERMAN 132:History and Politics of the Future in Germany, 1900-Present

The twentieth century brought profound changes to Germany, including two World Wars, changing borders, and the division between competing Cold War ideological blocs. At the same time, the necessity to build and reshape Germany also inspired politicians, writers, and filmmakers to think about how society could be made anew. The century especially ushered in a new era for thoughts about the future. Thinkers imagined new technologies, social structures, and political orders as they dreamed about a German future that could be different from its recent past. Furthermore, this period represented a golden age of German science fiction, as authors thought about what the future could and should be.nThis class considers the possibilities that Germans imagined for the future in the face of ambiguous promises of peace and warfare, democracy and totalitarianism, and capitalism and communism. Regardless of whether these hopes, dreams, and fears came to fruition, historical visions of the future illu
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The twentieth century brought profound changes to Germany, including two World Wars, changing borders, and the division between competing Cold War ideological blocs. At the same time, the necessity to build and reshape Germany also inspired politicians, writers, and filmmakers to think about how society could be made anew. The century especially ushered in a new era for thoughts about the future. Thinkers imagined new technologies, social structures, and political orders as they dreamed about a German future that could be different from its recent past. Furthermore, this period represented a golden age of German science fiction, as authors thought about what the future could and should be.nThis class considers the possibilities that Germans imagined for the future in the face of ambiguous promises of peace and warfare, democracy and totalitarianism, and capitalism and communism. Regardless of whether these hopes, dreams, and fears came to fruition, historical visions of the future illuminate the lives of Germans during the twentieth century.nThis course will use close readings of several types of primary sources, including films, television shows, short stories, political posters, art, and newspaper articles. We will consider what different thinkers anticipated as the possibilities for the development of the country and what they saw as the driving forces of change, such as mechanics and computers, political parties, and social movements. We will discuss which advancements they thought seemed likely and which seemed fantastical. Finally, this class will investigate how the future offered a space for dissident thinkers to articulate their frustrations with state and society.

Last offered: Spring 2019
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

GERMAN 133:Marx, Nietzsche, Freud

We read and discuss selections from works by the key master thinkers who have exerted a lasting influence by debunking long-cherished beliefs. Do these authors uphold or repudiate Enlightenment notions of rationality, autonomy and progress? How do they assess the achievements of civilization? How do their works illuminate the workings of power in social and political contexts? Readings and discussion in German.

This course takes students on a trip to major capital cities, at different moments in time: Renaissance Florence, Golden Age Madrid, Colonial Mexico City, Enlightenment and Romantic Paris, Existential and Revolutionary St. Petersburg, Roaring Berlin, Modernist Vienna, and bustling Buenos Aires. While exploring each place in a particular historical moment, we will also consider the relations between culture, power, and social life. How does the cultural life of a country intersect with the political activity of a capital? How do large cities shape our everyday experience, our aesthetic preferences, and our sense of history? Why do some cities become cultural capitals? Primary materials for this course will consist of literary, visual, sociological, and historical documents (in translation); authors we will read include Boccaccio, Dante, Sor Juana, Montesquieu, Baudelaire, Gogol, Irmgard Keun, Freud, and Borges. Note: To be eligible for WAYS credit, you must take the course for a Letter Grade.

What, if anything, does reading literature do for our lives? What can literature offer that other forms of writing cannot? Can fictions teach us anything? Can they make people more moral? Why do we take pleasure in tragic stories? This course introduces students to major problems at the intersection of philosophy and literature. It addresses key questions about the value of literature, philosophical puzzles about the nature of fiction and literary language, and ways that philosophy and literature interact. Readings span literature, film, and philosophical theories of art. Authors may include Sophocles, Dickinson, Toni Morrison, Proust, Woolf, Walton, Nietzsche, and Sartre. Students master close reading techniques and philosophical analysis, and write papers combining the two. This is the required gateway course for the Philosophy and Literature major tracks. Majors should register in their home department.

Masters of German 20th- and 21st-Century literature and philosophy as they present aesthetic innovation and confront the challenges of modern technology, social alienation, manmade catastrophes, and imagine the future. Readings include Nietzsche, Freud, Rilke, Musil, Brecht, Kafka, Doeblin, Benjamin, Juenger, Arendt, Musil, Mann, Adorno, Celan, Grass, Bachmann, Bernhardt, Wolf, and Kluge. Taught in English. Note for German Studies grad students:
GERMAN 322 will fulfill the grad core requirement since
GERMAN 332 is not being offered this year. NOTE: Enrollment requires Professor Eshel's consent. Please contact him directly at eshel@stanford.edu and answer these 2 questions: "Why do you want to take this course?" and "What do you think you can add to the discussion?" Applications will be considered in the order in which they were received. Enrollment is limited to 20 students.

GLOBAL 110:Love in the Time of Cinema (FILMSTUD 137, FILMSTUD 337, GLOBAL 211)

Romantic coupling is at the heart of mainstream film narratives around the world. Through a range of film cultures, we will examine cinematic intimacies and our own mediated understandings of love and conjugality formed in dialog with film and other media. We will consider genres, infrastructures, social activities (for example, the drive-in theater, the movie date, the Bollywood wedding musical, 90s queer cinema), and examine film romance in relation to queerness, migration, old age, disability, and body politics more broadly.